So first "top news spot" means that if you searched for the name of this person who got falsely accused on 4chan, you found the false accusation on 4chan (as the first result). That's all.

Calling this a "top news spot" ... I have no words. Perhaps we should say that this complaint is "fake news" ? I get that newspapers and even journalists have their existence threatened by Facebook and Google, but ... this is a low and very thin argument.

I don't understand what they want either. Censorship seems to be the real issue. The article is not so much taking offence at the information available, they're just angry that the information wasn't filtered through the "normal" channels. They were very unhappy various things didn't get suppressed. That Google had the gall to surface "unauthorized" information.

Never mind that if I was said falsely accused person, I would definitely have wanted that information surfaced. Including to a lawyer, and later to a judge. At issue are the person starting this rumour, and the publisher (ie. 4chan).

Their point is that in this case, things should have gotten suppressed, like naming a person as a culprit that had nothing to do with the incident. Now keep in mind that this is hyperbole: any searches related to the Las Vegas shooting never named anyone, but if you searched for that person's exact name it would surface a "fresh" result ... from 4chan, claiming he had something to do with the shooting.

I would argue that newspapers have done much worse than this. Much worse. Often repeatedly and in cases where there was an obvious financial or political motive for them to spread misinformation. I'd rather have all information, knowing that some may be wrong.

And the newspapers' "right" to filter all information I may see ? Screw that, if I want to see your filtered info, I'll go to your site. I may want to do that, for verification and because I think your filter is useful, but I do not want you or anyone filtering everything I see.

Absolutely right. 4chan is a discussion board not a news site, and does not 'report' the news and is self-contradicting on virtually every issue (because it's a discussion board). Now observe the media try to pull a fast one by drafting off of Facebook and Google's algorithm issues. Their real beef is that heated discussion leads to a more organic narrative rather than the one they've loosely tried to script.

Also it should not be news that a website largely devoted to conspiracy theorizing heats up in page rank after an event like this. Even if the discussion is bogus, let's face it people deep down want to entertain the possibility of conspiracy after every man-made disaster event- so it's relevant, especially in those first few hours before official sources have commented.

This is entirely a blown-up issue that is being used as a cover to start censoring and monitoring our communications on a far worse level.

Calm down! Nobody mentioned children yet!

We’re almost certainly witnessing the endgame to the 1990s boom of Silicon Valley. Google, Facebook and other content platforms will be regulated for impartiality, particularly around political speech. It doesn’t make sense to let Twitter, Facebook et al become private censors, and it’s clear that people retweet faster than they think.

> Take a search for "Las Vegas shooting". What is the impartial process for deciding the most relevant result for that? Relevance is inherently editorial.

In that case, the search should be done on the NYT site (or similar).

Or perhaps Google should add a "Use Edited Sites only" preference as a category of SafeSearch.

> In that case, the search should be done on the NYT site (or similar).

Huh? I'm saying the act of putting one site over another is itself a decision based on opinion.

Should machine learning be used to determine if the site has a summary of the situation...or is that even what the user was asking for? Should it just have those exact words in it? Should it be the most cited link? From the most cited source overall or on this particular topic? Should it instead be based on the clicks that links to that site gets? Was the most relevant site even in the sites originally in the list of sites to crawl for an index?

Also, not sure if you were just making a rhetorical point, but you'll note that your

> on the NYT site (or similar).

just kicks the can down the road. Why NYT? What similar sites are a good match instead? How do you even determine that some piece of writing is an editorial? Does it have to call itself that to qualify?